ALEXANDRIA, Va., April 9 -- United States Patent no. 12,272,573, issued on April 8, was assigned to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (Hsinchu, Taiwan).
"Load port and methods of operation" was invented by Yi-Fam Shiu (Toufen, Taiwan), Ting-Yau Shiu (Taoyuan, Taiwan), Cheng-Lung Wu (Zhunan Township, Taiwan), Yang-Ann Chu (Hsinchu, Taiwan) and Jiun-Rong Pai (Jhubei, Taiwan).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A load port is capable of monitoring various environmental parameters associated with a transport carrier to minimize and/or prevent exposure of the semiconductor substrates therein to increased humidity, increased oxygen, increased vibration, and/or one or more other elevated environ...